Day: July 24, 2015

Many people think morality should be based on doing the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Of course, this sounds good and obvious at first glance. However, I do not think that this rule, by itself, can work.

Although “doing the most good” works in a variety of situations, it fails in many others. For example, doing medical experiments, even painful ones, on those who were imprisoned during the Holocaust could have been legitimized under this guideline. The people in these camps were going to die anyways, and the experiments could lead to the advancement of health for others. Given these types of situations, I cannot say that utilitarianism alone makes for good source of morality.

Now, some would argue that, while these situations are awful, these types events are simply counter-intuitive, and then, they would stick to their guns. I, however, cannot, at this time, do this. I think there, at the very least, needs to be some additional rules. Perhaps, we also need to do the least harm and respect rights.

For example, let’s say there are a bunch of people in the hospital who need organs and a healthy person sitting the waiting room. It is not okay to kill the healthy person in order to save the others. The healthy person has a right to life, and killing the person would not be doing the least harm. Yes, some of these people waiting for organs might die in the process, but there is a viable alternative to murder. They can simply wait on the organ donation list, and once again, the healthy person has rights. Meanwhile under strict utilitarianism, it would be okay to kill the healthy person.

I’m not completely devoted to system I’ve explained; however, I’m attempting to carve out what is good in utilitarianism and get rid of what, at first glance, sounds horrible. Please fill free to critique me, and give me your opinions.